This month we’ve been taking giant steps with the localization of e-books for learning foreign languages.

The idea is to take original texts, written for students learning Italian or English, and ‘localize’ them into other languages, so as to make them suitable for those learning French, Spanish, German or other languages.

That means rather more than just translating them. For example, a story written for people learning Italian, about a British guy who comes to Italy and falls in love with his teacher, would be localised for students of French with a different language, city, female protagonist’s name, and so on.

Over the weekend I read/listened to three ‘easy readers’ in Spanish and the same three in French. Easy readers are a hugely effective way of building listening and reading skills in a foreign language, so after just an hour or two I felt I’d made progress!

Admittedly, I studied French at school (over thirty years ago). But I’ve never done any Spanish… Perhaps it’s because I speak Italian that I was able to follow the texts and audio fairly well.

To find out more about how easy readers can supplement a traditional language course or self-study program, take a look at our new online shop, which is live already but will be officially launched in time for the new school year in September!

This week we’ve been working on our new online shop, easyreaders.org.

It’ll stock easy readers, parallel texts and all the other types of e-books we already offer on our various language-learning websites.

But all in one place and with a much more professional interface! Clients will be able to search by language, level, text type, author name and so on. The shop will boast multiple payment types: Paypal, as usual, but also Pay With Amazon and bank transfer.

Eventually we’ll be experimenting with other e-book formats, such as Kindle.

So far the shop is just a construction site, but we’re working on it. By the end of the summer holidays, it’ll be stocked with everything you need to improve your Italian, English, French, Spanish, German, and perhaps other languages too!

Announcing our newest project, a departure from what we usually do in the sense that it’s not aimed at foreign language learners but at language teachers.

The new site features articles written by working Italian teachers with tips and advice on lesson planning, methodology, technologies and so on.

The enthusiasm we’ve encountered amongst young Italian teachers has been incredible – we’ve got some excellent articles lined up and will be publishing them weekly from now on.

Visit italianoxstranieri.com to see what we’ve been up to!

Thanks to Anya Lauri, our multi-lingual, multi-talented graphic designer who came up with our new company logo.

Her idea is based on the biblical concept of ‘the tree of knowledge’, which seemed more to do with sex than languages, but we liked the image so much that we went with it anyway!

For me, the colours represent the different languages that we offer through our growing range of websites. Italian and English of course, but now also Spanish, German, French, with others on the way.

To see more of Anya’s designs, check out the ‘monkey doesn’t speak’ logo on dontspeakitalian.com or our new site (currently under development) for Italian residents who need to learn Italian, italianoxstranieri.com